TELEVISION

TELEVISION; The End of the Surprise Ending

By EMILY NUSSBAUM

Published: May 9, 2004

FOR most viewers, this year's Super Bowl Sunday was memorable mainly for Janet Jackson's infamous wardrobe malfunction. But for fans of ''Survivor: All-Stars,'' the top-rated contest among the show's former champions, the night has become notable for another type of exposure. The series made its debut immediately after the game, and minutes after the first contestant was bounced from paradise, an anonymous gremlin posted a massive ''spoiler'' on the entertainment Web site Ain't It Cool News -- a detailed list of upcoming plot twists. Even some fans who had deliberately sought the document out regretted reading it. What fun was watching if you already knew everything that was going to happen?

It was yet another blow to suspense, that gorgeous sensation that is fading fast from the experience of watching television. For many viewers, TV shows are pleasurable precisely because they arrive in tantalizing episodes, slowly doling out twists and turns. But with ever more behind-the-scenes information floating around in gossip columns, online discussion boards and mainstream publications, it has now become entirely possible to find out what happens to favorite characters months in advance. This leakage is fundamentally altering the nature of episodic TV. Shows are becoming more like books: if you want to know what happens later on, just peek at the last page.

Among those who traffic in spoilers, these ruptures of the classic TV dynamic are the greatest compliment fans can pay their favorite shows. The most popular series -- action dramas like ''24'' and ''Alias''; glossy soaps like ''The O.C.''; beloved sitcoms like ''Friends'' and ''Frasier''; reality competitions like ''The Apprentice'' -- have all been the victims of steady leaks. By contrast, notes Amy Amatangelo, who writes the TVGal column at Zap2It.com, ''There's no one out there begging for 'Judging Amy' spoilers.''

However, for television writers laboring over intricately constructed plots, spoilers can be a special torment. ''They beat me up; they took my lunch money,'' sighs Joss Whedon, whose productions (including ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' and the recently canceled ''Angel'') have been longtime sieves for inside information. ''I tried to fight them for years, including this year. And I lost. I tried to keep Christian Kane's appearance on 'Angel' a secret, and I made the cardinal mistake: I filmed with extras.'' Extras are on the set briefly, and once they leave there's nothing to keep them from talking about what they saw there. ''The only way to rid yourself of spoilers is to try to make work that people are not interested in, and that's not a method I'm going to try,'' Mr. Whedon concluded.

For Mr. Whedon, the death of television surprise is the end of what he calls a ''holy emotion.'' Surprise, he argues, ''makes you humble. It makes you small in the world, and takes you out of your own perspective. It shows you that you're wrong, the world is bigger and more complicated than you'd imagined.'' He continued, ''The more we dilute that with insider knowledge, with previews that show too much, with spoilers, with making-of specials, the more we're robbing ourselves of something we essentially need.''

J. J. Abrams, the creator and executive producer of ''Alias,'' expresses a similar mix of chagrin and resignation. ''On the one hand,'' he said, ''it's infuriating when the secret gets out. It's like you work very hard to put on a magic show, and the audience has already read how your tricks are done. On the other hand, we are beholden to the fans. I appreciate it as much as I despise it. I'm pretty convinced if I weren't doing this, I'd be one of the people wanting to know.'

In the last two years, spoilers have increasingly migrated into newspapers and magazines, sometimes blocked off under special warnings, sometimes simply dished up in gossip columns. But their emergence is tied directly to the lively, occasionally worshipful and often rancorous community of television watchers online, where devoted fans gather to talk about the shows they love -- and often directly to the people who make them. On sites like Ain't It Cool News, E! Online and Zap2It, columnists publish spoilers each week, culled from an army of anonymous e-mail tipsters. These items ricochet into the entertainment press, blurring the line between zingy preview and total giveaway.

Many online columnists justify their work with the classic drug-dealer argument: they're just giving people what they want. But they also say they shouldn't be scapegoated for the larger tendency toward revelation, fueled in part by the networks themselves. ''Is there a spoiler site on the Internet as ruinous to fan enjoyment as the Fox network's promo department?'' Hercules, the pseudonymous TV maven at Ain't It Cool News, argued in an e-mail exchange.

To feed this hunger, columnists like Hercules depend on a network of secret sources: ''Usually office types, I think, at the networks, in the talent agencies, in casting offices, within screaming distance of the writers' rooms,'' Hercules said. In an interview, the E! Online columnist Kristen Veitch explained: ''I know it sounds funny, because this is just entertainment, but knowledge is power. If you're a lowly assistant who knows something, you can become a very important source to these big players in the spoiler world.'' A few sources are disgruntled employees (''exes are very dangerous,'' Mr. Whedon notes). But the majority of those who distribute spoilers are devoted fans, either working within television production companies or e-mailing with those who do. '' 'Spoiler whores' are a subversive and unsavory lot, but also typically true believers,'' Hercules wrote.